Looking For A Lifestyle Fix?

When chiropractor Tyler Fix isn’t seeing patients, he’s either playing hockey, mountain biking, golfing, waterskiing or chasing after his now two-year-old son, Noah.

“I’m pretty much doing anything that keeps me moving,” says Fix, laughing. The importance of moving is a message he shares with his patients at Redefined Health, including those who come to him with lower back pain.

Quality of movement important

“Any joint is healthier when it’s moving,” says Fix, “and that goes for your back, too. If you’re not moving, you’re not going to get better. We make sure to focus on the quality of the movement, too, because it’s equally important to move properly.”

Fix has been a chiropractor for more than seven years now, the first six working for an Edmonton sports rehab clinic where many of the patients were high-profile professional athletes seeking treatment for injuries.

Being proactive

“It was an amazing facility, and we had a very active patient base,” says Fix, “but we saw a lot of ‘last resort’ people who were already injured, and already in pain. I wanted to be more proactive, and to incorporate more lifestyle elements into what I was doing, like nutrition and exercise.”

He opened Redefined Health on 124th Street and 101st Avenue in Edmonton less than a year ago, his vision to offer treatment and education to help people live better, longer, healthier lives. In addition to chiropractic services, the clinic offers custom rehabilitation programs, soft tissue therapy, custom foot orthotics and a wellness program, with one of the main components being a customized daily exercise routine.

Customizing exercise

The bottom line, says Fix, is that people aren’t going to continue doing something if they don’t enjoy it, which is why the customization aspect of exercise is so important. “We want to incorporate lifestyle changes that are ongoing, not just for a couple of weeks, or however long it takes for the pain in their back to go away,” he said. Typically, activities such as walking, swimming, cycling and yoga are recommended for people with lower back pain. But Fix says because there’s so much flexion in daily life—sitting, bending, lifting, driving—it can be difficult for people to do them effectively.

Getting started is the key

“We do so many things bent forward,” he says. “When you’re overusing it, it makes it difficult to stabilize your body outside of that position, or to hold your back in a normal position.” While he still sees a number of professional athletes, his practice has expanded to include men and women of all ages—and all fitness levels. He says in an ideal world people would incorporate movement into their life for an hour a day, but that isn’t always possible, or even realistic. “Getting people to start—period—is really a victory. If they go from doing nothing, to even 10 or 15 minutes a day, that makes a huge difference.”